Bacterial infections are among the most common causes of medical complications and illness in developed countries. That said, many bacterial infections develop resistance to conventional antibiotics. There is a need to develop new antibacterial compound to address the problem of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Thus, identifying new effective drugs for bacterial infections is a continuing focus of medical research.
pGpG is a secondary messenger molecule which is vital for many pathogenic bacteria. pGpG plays an important role in chemical signaling and is vital in numerous enzymatic processes. To date, little is known about the specific targets that recognize pGpG and the method by which pGpG signaling occurs. Accordingly, the development of a chemical probe which can be used to identify pGpG-binding domains would be a significant advance.